>>John did carefully write his words and said "most IT managers....".

You are absolutely right about what John said, and I'm still contending that most IT managers would not laugh you out of their office if you proposed VFP as a solution. Any solution proposed that speaks to the success of a customer's goals and vision would be considered thoughtfully by most IT managers I know. It's a disparaging remark and lacks veracity on the whole.

>>I would expect that if your firm deals with many large corps, some of you were surprised that one actually requested VFP.

I wasn't surprised that my client requested VFP. I have a number of large clients that use it for various reasons. Top of the list would be VFP's ability to massage data quickly and usefully. The cursor engine/syntax in VFP is the best I've seen and ADO.NET is perhaps getting more than a few lessons from it even as we speak. Please don't misunderstand me, I am in no way saying that VFP is good at everything and every project should be written in it. I am saying that VFP is a developer tool of merit, that can prove beneficial to developers and customers alike when applied conscienciously. I find myself thinking, "I wish I could do this like I can in that other tool.", many times during the day, whether I am working in VFP, .NET, Delphi, ASP, PHP, SQL Server, or whatever. It's one of the reasons I am so excited about Sedna and all the other MS moves of late that will give me the ability to interop between different MS products easier.

>>Corporations converting Foxpro/VFP apps to other tools was what caused the decline in usage of VFP. I don't see anything that will ever change that.

There is more than a kernel of truth in what you have just said above. But, I can also remember watching droves of companies convert their VFP-based systems to VB because it was a foregone conclusion at the time that VFP was dead. It was a costly mistake for those companies as most of them are finding themselves once again converting their applications to VB.NET or some other development platform.

Most of the arguments for or against VFP have been made a million times over. I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other, your opinion and feelings on the matter are valid (everyone's feelings and opinions are valid on some level). The percentage of VFP use when compared to other tools on large projects is indeed smaller... that's not an opion that's a fact. But that doesn't make VFP an ill-conceived solution for the projects that it is being used on. As for John, I actually enjoy his posts when he's not in a mud slinging match with someone. He strikes me as someone who's intelligent and witty, and some of his posts have proved more that little thought provoking for me, so I find there is some depth to him as well. Not that he was in need of my endorsement, but just in case you were wondering.

>Craig,
>
>John did carefully write his words and said "most IT managers....". I would expect that if your firm deals with many large corps, some of you were surprised that one actually requested VFP. Corporations converting Foxpro/VFP apps to other tools was what caused the decline in usage of VFP. I don't see anything that will ever change that.
>
>PF
>
>
>>I have to agree with you that customers are much more Tech-Savy than in years gone by and dealing with IT departments is pretty likely on medium-large projects. However, the comment about "laugh you out of their office" regarding VFP is simply erroneous. I have a client (NDA bars me from disclosing their name) that is one of the world's largest mutual fund companies (SEC filings of well over 300 billion), and they specifically requested VFP, and it is one of just a few developer tools approved by their IT department. In the end, it's all about what tool is best suited for the job. I doubt that I've persuaded you, but that's ok. I just didn't want future readers of this thread to see your post and believe it to be true, when it's not.
>>
>>>>So, having said all this, can we finally put this to rest here on
>>>>the UT?
>>>>
>>>
>>>So becuase you have had your say, everyone else should now accept your words as truth and nod in agreement and then just go away?
>>>
>>>I don't know what kinds of clients you support, but our clients (major banks with IT departments and some of the largest mutual fund companies in the world), all care about the software the base code is written in. They worry about the effect of installing extra software or runtime files on their servers. We have to jump through hoops simply to get stored procedures altered. Ask most IT managers in America about installing foxpro on their servers and they'd probably laugh you out of their office or try finding ISP's who allow you to install VFP runtimes on their servers.
>>>
>>>That said, it is spurious to argue that people don't care what the base is written in.